The film tracks Frank through his week from hell in present-day London, a different look than the grotty Copenhagen streets in the Danish original. Refn, who went on to make Drive, cut his teeth with the low-budget Pusher, which he directed and also co-wrote. Its box office success spawned a trilogy and also gave Mads Mikkelsen his screen start as Frank’s sidekick, Tonny.

Prieto ups the stakes with a more cinematically polished version, starring a capable Richard Coyle (W.E., TV’s Covert Affairs) as street dealer Frank, who ends up owing the wrong people, and newcomer Bronson Webb (who is even better) as his dim-bulb Cockney tagalong, Tony.

Frank is hopeful he can make some serious cash by sending a woman to Amsterdam to pick up a load of cocaine — using borrowed money — and smuggle it back. The plan is set in motion, much to the astonishment of mouthy Tony, who prattles on about exactly where she’ll stash it for the trip home.

The characters that populate Pusher are surprisingly naïve and hardly the brightest of bulbs. So much for the image of the wily, street-smart criminal. These too-trusting wise guys couldn’t organize a trip to the bathroom.

It’s clear Prieto has watched a bit too much Guy Ritchie, and favours flash over substance when it comes to plot and character development. We’d love to know more about Milo (Zlatko Buric, reprising his role from the original), the Serbian hood and budding chef who uses a bridal store as a front for his drug business. He furnishes Frank with seed money and dope and occasional bits of menacing-sounding advice.

Milo is good for a plate of baklava and a few shots of tequila, but he and his henchmen are not the sort you want to owe. And when deals start to fall through with spectacularly bad timing amid double crosses and unwelcome attention from the cops, Franks feels the noose tightening as the pounds and dope he thought he could count on slip away.

Prieto’s fondness for quick-moving camera tricks, bloody violence and repetitive club scenes — which start with Frank packing a noseful of coke before evolving into thumping bass and swirling lights — provide the essential woe at the heart of Pusher. There’s nothing new here; we’ve seen most of this druggie underbelly stuff far too many times before. Frank is no Einstein, true, but we’re not given much to make him the sort an audience can root for in Matthew Read’s script as he gets more desperate to survive the worst week imaginable.

Ditto his stripper girlfriend, Flo (supermodel Agyness Deyn). All heroin addicts should look so good. She’s more arm candy than plot-propelling force, although she starts to earn her stripes in the final reel.

Those seeking a character study of how a small-time gangster eventually swirls the drain when he owes the wrong people are much better off with Daniel Espinosa’s Easy Money, which landed in theatres in August. The key difference is when Easy Money’s desperate dealer finds his back against the wall, he fights back. Frank’s problem is that when it comes to being a pusher, he’s just a pushover.

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